US President Donald Trump, in his first tweet of 2018, had lashed out at Pakistan for providing safe havens to terrorists and accused it of "lies and deceit" and of fooling US leaders while sheltering terrorists.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres informed the General Assembly in late January that 14 countries including Venezuela and Libya were in arrears, and Assembly spokesman Brenden Varma confirmed today that Venezuela has lost its vote in the 193-member global organisation as a result. Libya did as well.

"As such, the United States is pulling out all of its elements of intelligence gathering to provide a very very deep dive into the Chinese plan," Dan Coats, Director of National Intelligence told lawmakers during a Congressional hearing.

Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao is accepting the check from the president in the amount of USD 100,000. The donation announced today in the White House briefing room comes a day after Trump released a plan to rebuild crumbling roads, bridges and ports.

South Korea's trade ministry said on Wednesday it will take a dispute to the World Trade Organization against the United States for imposing high anti-dumping duties on South Korean steel and transformers.

Russian experts probing the weekend plane crash outside Moscow which killed 71 people said the accident may have been caused by ice on speed probes which led to faulty information on the crafts airspeed.

While the paper by the French economists argued that the post-1991 reforms have seen a rise in inequality, the Oxfam report said in 2017, top 1 percent of the population cornered as much as 73 percent of the wealth generated.